RELIEF, RECOVERY, REBUILDINGImmediately after the Asian tsunami in December, conventional wisdom held that the best way to help was to send cash. Patricia Owens ' 58 decided on amore direct approach. She had raised fivechildren, run an art gallery and two cloth-ing stores, but she had never done reliefwork before - or hands-on volunteerwork of any kind. But she had traveledextensively and was convinced that thou-sands would need help and not get it."I knew if I went there, I could help,"she said. ''I'm strong enough to do physicalwork, and I'm smart enough to do intellec-tual work. I knew I could do whatever wasneeded."In late January, Owens flew for 23 hoursand rode a bus for seven more to join aninternational team of volunteers inMaharnodera, a village near Galle, SriLanka. ''I'd been on that seven-hour trip on46

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this awful, old rickety-rackety hot bus andthen got down there, went to bed, got upthe next morning and felt like a milliondollars," she said. "Everybody just got up .and jumped out, went to work."During her three-week stay, she helpedclear debris from wrecked home sites and aheavily damaged hospital, and she helpedrestore operations at a nearby orphanageand handicapped shelter."The monks essentially run that littlevillage," Owens said. "We were the firsthelp they had seen."Although the tsunamidamage was confined to a two-block stripalong the coast, that strip was one of theheaviest populated areas, and it was devas-tated. Structures slightly up the hillsides -including the spartan guesthollse where sheoriginally stayed - were fine, and by thetime she arrived, food and water supplieswere in place.The head monk, Rev. Priyankara, sentthe tearn out the first day to help residentsclear wreckage from their homes, or whatwas left of them. Initially, they moved rub-ble to the streets by hand."He had a couple of old, broken-downwheelbarrows and a few awful, old shovelsthat weren't any good," Owens said. "Wewere all warned to bring heavy gloves andserious work clothes. We knew that wewere going to do whatever it took. Thefirst thing we did was go clean a woman'shouse for her. It was completely destroyed.Everything in it was piled up. It had beencrashed. She was a widow, and when wecleaned her place and got her so she couldget in her house - she was one of the fewwhose house was left - she was so happy."She kept bringing us orange drink thatshe'd made, which, of course, we couldn'tdrink because it wasn't made Witll bottled